


gunfire on a thursday afternoon

by amosanguis



Series: author's fave [111]
Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Military, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, BAMF Bilbo Baggins, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Graphic Description, Humor, M/M, Modern Royalty, Pining, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Torture, War, military culture is singing disney songs whenever you can
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-03-01 16:48:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23720338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amosanguis/pseuds/amosanguis
Summary: “Psst,” Bilbo whispers until the new captive looks over at him, eyes bright in the dull light coming in from outside, “did you get caught jaywalking, too?”Alternatively, a navy corpsman and a soldier prince meet in captivity and fall in love. They lose each other for a time, but it all works out in the end.
Relationships: Bilbo Baggins/Thorin Oakenshield
Series: author's fave [111]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/427960
Comments: 13
Kudos: 273





	gunfire on a thursday afternoon

**Author's Note:**

> **General**  
>  \--Everyone’s human with modern tech like phones and cars, but we’re keeping Tolkien place names and languages  
> \--Quick Khuzdul terms of endearment: _amrâlimê_ (my love) and _ghivashel_ (treasure of treasures)  
> \--Title from "What Every Soldier Should Know" by Brian Turner; all poetry by Brian Turner from _Here, Bullet_.
> 
>  **Military**  
>  \--HMC – Navy rating (job title) that breaks down like this: HM is a hospital corpsman, C is a chief (an E-7 with the E denoting someone who is enlisted as opposed to an O which would be an officer; enlisted ranks go from, low to high, E-1 to E-9)  
> \--MRE means ‘meals ready to eat’

I.

> _You will hear the RPG coming for you.  
>  _ _Not so the roadside bomb._
> 
> **What Every Soldier Should Know**

HMC Bilbo doesn’t want to be dramatic or anything, but war, as it’s been said before, is hell.

And as a medic, he gets to see it in all its bright and bloody cheeriness, gets to listen to its soundtrack of screaming and begging and praying and last wishes and messages.

Bilbo doesn’t get much sleep.

Still, he finds himself back for a second tour and then a third (because he’s damn good at what he does and he’s saved more than he’s lost and it’s not like this war with Mordor will be ending anytime soon).

Bilbo is just finishing his ravioli, MRE-fresh, and looks around.

At least Mordor had the decency to be a blackened wasteland. Something about that just seemed honest.

He has a few minutes before his company will be moving out—(Minas Morgul had recently been retaken, so Bilbo’s unit had been redirected from The Wastes to help lock down the stronghold instead)—so, he closes his eyes – knowing that even five minutes would be better than none. Bilbo falls asleep to the sound of muttered conversations and equipment being moved and weapons being checked and, in the distance, someone singing about how they can’t wait to be king.

Bilbo wakes to the sound of a high-pitched whistle, like a firework being shot into the sky.

_Bilbo’s hands are steady as he works, his assessments take only seconds—_

“Corporal,” Bilbo says, “where you from?”

— _Assessment: wound, gunshot, thigh; no spurting, blood is a darker red color – the artery isn’t hit; non-fatal, continue work_ —

“Hey, there, doc, how are ya?” the corporal answers, laughing through his pain.

“Good, good,” Bilbo answers. “Answer my question.”

— _no exit wound; not the place to remove a bullet, leave it where it is; stop the bleeding_ —

Bilbo pulls gauze pads from his bag, listens as the corporal talks about Bree and his sister and his mother, struggling to speak as Bilbo puts pressure on the wound. Bilbo keeps asking questions, revealing he knows Bree well, forcing the soldier under his hands to keep talking, asks him to repeat answers if Bilbo misses them over the sound of gunfire.

— _bleeding not stopping, but not enough bleeding for a tourniquet_ —

Bilbo adds another layer of gauze atop the one already in place, repeating the action until the blood flow slows.

— _wrap it_ —

“You’re doing great, corporal,” Bilbo says, taking the young soldier’s hands and positioning them over the gauze. “Hold this for me, don’t let up on the pressure.”

“They gonna need to take my leg, doc?” the kid asks with something of a smirk.

Bilbo snorts as he pulls out more gauze, this time a roll of it. “Your leg’s not going—”

Someone shouts, “ _Sniper_ ” just in time for Bilbo to lift his head – the bullet missing his helmet and kissing him on the shoulder and spinning him around. Before he can get up, there’s another report – distant and far away as sniper fire always is – and Bilbo’s corporal goes limp.

— _new_ _assessment: wound, head, fatal; move on to the next casualty._

They don’t bother asking Bilbo if he’s ready to go home, instead, they give him two weeks to recover at the field hospital (the sniper’s bullet had torn a small chunk out of his shoulder and Bilbo, thinking about his corporal, counts himself lucky).

After his two weeks are up, Bilbo takes his pack and grabs his helmet and they send him off to rejoin his unit.

When Bilbo returns to his company, now completely entrenched at Minas Morgul, he’s greeted to a cacophony of exaggerated _howdys_ and _thank Eru you’re back, doc, I stubbed my damn toe_. They all come up to him with the smallest of injuries before Bilbo disperses them with the threat of writing them all up for malingering – fighting back his grin the whole time.

Oin, a young lieutenant on his first tour, grins at Bilbo from the back of the tent.

“They just missed you,” he says.

Bilbo shares his smile once it’s safe to do so. “It’d be flattering,” he says, “but I wasn't gone two weeks.”

“It was a very stressful two weeks,” Oin says, features innocent even as his eyes twinkle.

Bilbo heaves a sigh and settles at the table across from the officer and asks Oin to fill him in on what he’s missed.

Time in a war zone is meaningless.

There are short bouts of fighting and gaining ground – making minutes stretch out into years; and then there are the longer bouts of nothing. Waiting. Waiting for the next meal, the next patrol – waiting even for the next need to take a shit. But the days still pass until Bilbo has a month left of this tour before he’ll be heading back home for nine months. He’s still trying to decide where his next rotation will take him, if he’ll volunteer for another tour in Mordor or maybe Moria, though the latter is a cause he’s a little less sure of.

Bilbo tears open his MRE, meatballs this time, and sets about preparing his food, Oin doing the same at his side. Bilbo glances over. Oin is growing into a fine officer and Bilbo likes to think he had a good hand in it.

The corpsman, HM2 Eowyn, who usually goes out with the patrols falls ill and Bilbo volunteers to take her spot.

“Don’t you know better, chief?” the gunnery sergeant, a man from Bilbo’s own hometown of Hobbiton, whom they all call ‘Gaffer’ laughs, ducking another shot. “N-A-V-Y! Never again volunteer yourself!”

“Shut it, gunny,” Bilbo snaps as he ties off the wrapping on the arm of a lance corporal before giving her a nod – she nods back and darts off to the cover of another Humvee, sighting down her gun.

Gaffer goes to say something, but then the lance corporal calls out, “ _Incoming mortars_.”

Bilbo wakes up tied to a chair.

In front of him is a camera on a tripod, its little red light blinking ominously.

Bilbo stares it down and forces himself to straighten, says, “HMC Bilbo Baggins. Serial number—"

II.

> _Sgt. Ledouix of the National Guard  
>  _ _speaks but cannot hear the words coming out,  
>  _ _and it’s just as well his eardrums ruptured  
>  _ _because it lends the world a certain calm_
> 
> **2000 lbs.**

Bilbo’s cell is just a slab of concrete, a threadbare blanket, and toilet without a seat. Which. At least it had running water. If the light from the little window is anything to go by, he spends at least three days in his cell before he’s retrieved and once more placed in front of the camera.

Someone in the shadows asks him questions – where were the patrols? what are the numbers? what technology did they have? – and no matter how much they dig underneath his fingernails, among other things, Bilbo says nothing but his name, rank, and serial number. They scream at him and he screams back before they tire of him and throw him back into his cell.

For the lack of anything better to do, Bilbo talks to his neighbors and they (quietly) sing their own versions of various Disney songs.

They call their area the Jailhouse, because military folk are nothing if not creative – it’s the basement of whatever stronghold they’re in, with four 3x5-foot cells lined against one wall and four more lined against the other.

While Bilbo thought it foolish to let prisoners be able to see and converse freely, the prisoners are, unfortunately, able to _see and converse freely_.

They _see_ fresh wounds turn into festering ones; they see how, after an especially cold night, someone doesn’t rise in the morning and the body is left for days until the guards themselves tire of the stink.

The guards bring in another captive and he’s deposited in the cell next to Bilbo’s.

As soon as they’re gone, Bilbo leans close to the bars.

“ _Psst_ ,” Bilbo whispers until the new captive looks over at him, eyes bright in the dull light coming in from outside, “did you get caught jaywalking, too?”

The man just stares at him.

Bilbo winks.

“You’re crazy,” the man says. “How long you been here? You lost your mind, haven’t you?”

“No, no, no,” Bilbo says, with a wave of his fingernail-less hands, “I’ve always been like this.”

The man huffs a laugh and shakes his head.

“I’m Bilbo, by the way.”

“Thorin.”

“Welcome to the Jailhouse, Thorin.”

“A grocer.”

Bilbo smirks, lolling his head to look over at the man in the cell next to his. “No.”

“A teacher.”

“In a way,” Bilbo admits.

Thorin sags against the bars of his cell, his back to the walkway as he looks down at Bilbo. Over the past couple of days, he’s been trying to guess what Bilbo did before the war. Most of the guesses have simply been rude, if nothing else, but Bilbo decides that if that’s what it takes to distract Thorin from his mangled and broken feet, the bones of which Bilbo had reset as best he could, Bilbo will let it go.

Thorin leans forward, his eyes narrowed playfully, “Chief, do you run a multi-level marketing scam? I bet you prey on your high school classmates, don’t you?”

Bilbo covers his face with his arms and laughs (quietly, _very_ quietly). They all learned quickly that laughter attracts attention and, if they see you smiling on their little cameras, the visit they pay you comes in the middle of the night and they won’t necessarily remove you from your cell.

“No,” he says, moving his arms away from his face and looking at Thorin. “You, though,” Bilbo decides it’s his turn to guess, “I bet you’re a lumberjack.”

Thorin pretends to cough to cover his own laugh. “Why?”

And because they’re never promised tomorrow, Bilbo answers truthfully. “Mostly just because I like the image of you in flannel, carrying an axe.”

Thorin ducks his head and his ears turn pink.

“Get a room,” another captive, Bard, calls out.

Bard is a spec ops sniper. He and Bilbo had met in passing during Bilbo’s first tour and the only reason, the _only_ possible reason Bard still lived, was because their captors had no idea just who they had in their midst. And Bilbo is always careful to avoid saying the man’s name, just in case.

Bilbo and Thorin flip him off, their movements in perfect sync.

When next the guards come for Bilbo, he throws Thorin a saucy wink and says, “I’m gonna run out for some smokes. Do you need anything, darling?”

Thorin, his eyes hard, says, “I’m fine, _amrâlimê_.”

Something about the exchange infuriates his captors, maybe it was the disrespect from Bilbo or the Khuzdul from Thorin, but Bilbo’s taken to a different room than usual and the man here wears an ORC insignia on his collar and Bilbo can’t suppress his shiver.

He loses track of time after that.

The next time Bilbo comes to, Thorin’s not in the cell next to him.

“They dragged him out after they brought you back,” says Bard.

Guilt, hot and vile, twists in Bilbo’s chest. But it’s just another pain atop the others and Bilbo and Guilt are old friends, so he pushes it aside and forces himself to rest.

Thorin comes back and he’s shaking and bleeding, mumbling in Khuzdul, and Bilbo wishes desperately he could understand the words. Bilbo reaches through the bars and he grabs Thorin by his uniform and drags him over, getting him as close to Bilbo as he can – before Bilbo starts running his hands over Thorin, doing his best to identify where the bleeding was coming from.

Then he finds it.

The wound is a large one, right in the middle of Thorin’s back.

Bilbo curses and takes off his shirt, wadding it up and pressing it between the outer layer of Thorin’s uniform and the inner layer that was Thorin’s undershirt. He keeps Thorin on his side, one hand pulling Thorin tight against the bars, while his other hand pushed the shirt against Thorin’s wound.

All of Bilbo’s medical instincts were screaming about infections, his brain unhelpfully supplying images of gangrene and fever-delirious patients suffering from septicemia.

“I’m sorry,” Bilbo whispers, clutching Thorin, Bilbo pressing his own body tightly against the bars, trying to offer what comfort he could. “Fuck, I’m sorry.”

Thorin, breathing heavy, reaches up and grips tight Bilbo’s arm.

“Don’t apologize, _ghivashel_ ,” he rasps. “It was hilarious.”

Bilbo wants to scream.

The gunfire and artillery start at some point in the night.

Jets scream by and the ground shakes and Bilbo does his best to hold Thorin through it.

Bard starts up a wholly inappropriate version of _Kiss the Girl_ – syncing up shouts of “sha-la-la-la-la-la” with the “rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat” of a dozen M4s clearing a room above them. Soon Bard and the other prisoners who are able are standing, rattling their bars and screaming, “sha-la-la-la-la-la, _my, oh my!_ ”

Bilbo never expects the rescue, but as soon as he sees those blessedly familiar uniforms framing blessedly familiar faces descending on them, he screams, “Fucking impeccable timing, Gaffer. And you! HM2, get your ass over here and hand me that pack.”

Thorin needs way more attention than what they can give him here, but Bilbo works with what he has as their rescuers scramble to put a stretcher together. He talks Thorin through all the things he’s doing, putting HM2 Eowyn’s steadier hands to work cleaning and binding Thorin’s feet as he himself sees to the back wound.

He pulls off the day-old dirty, stinking shirts and quickly and efficiently scrubs—

(“ _Fuck_ your bedside manner, grocer,” Thorin snarls.

“Not a grocer, you horse’s ass,” Bilbo yells back, because yelling is something they can do right now and it’s keeping Thorin’s eyes clear and focused.)

—the wound clean, before he redresses it in sterile bandages. Next, he stuffs an ibuprofen down Thorin’s throat along with some clean water.

“Doc, not that I don’t trust your judgement,” Thorin says, his eyes narrowed in a way that has no right to be funny given the circumstances, “but ibuprofen and water can’t cure _everything_.”

“No,” Bilbo says, voice softer than he intends as he watches that stretcher make its way towards them, “but it’ll do for now.”

Bilbo helps them ease Thorin onto the stretcher and walks with him up and out of the stronghold, the light of the sun temporarily blinding him – and between the sunlight and the amount of soldiers surrounding them, moving in and around them, Bilbo loses Thorin in the chaos. And soon enough, Bilbo himself is swept up by a medic.

He quickly learns that the tapes had led to their discovery and that, after the stronghold, which was Barad-dur itself, was taken, Mordor had surrendered. He also learns that his imprisonment had lasted three months, which leads to Bilbo complaining to Oin that he was supposed to be home _two months ago_ and it was simply _rude_ of the enemy to have kept him from home so long.

Oin, who normally responds to Bilbo’s tirades with something light, doesn’t laugh when he says, “Well, they could’ve killed you instead.”

Bilbo snorts, but he still puts a comforting hand on Oin’s shoulder, the officer was still young, before Bilbo leaves him to start another search for Thorin.

But, frustratingly, the man simply cannot be found in any medical tent or makeshift ward, and no one seems to know who he’s talking about. Bilbo _does_ find Bard and confirms with him that Thorin had in fact been real.

Bard seems to get it, though, so there’s nothing condescending in his voice when he says, “Yes, he was real.”

Which is good, because Bilbo was really starting to doubt himself. It doesn't settle his mind, however, because he still can't find the man.

A couple days later and Bilbo is pulled from his search and put on a plane back to the joint military base in Minas Tirith to see a counselor.

She tells him he’s done well, and he says, “I know.”

She tells him he doesn’t have to do any more, and he says, “I know.”

She tells him that maybe it’s time to think about retirement, and he looks away from her and out the window and he says, “I know.”

He thinks about Thorin and wonders if they’re gently suggesting retirement to him, too.

III.

> _It’s the sound from the aid station  
>  _ _that wakes me, thin steel  
>  _ _from Doc Cole’s six-string,  
>  _ _a 4 A.M. sound of sour whiskey,  
>  _ _…  
>  _ _that’s the sound I’m hearing now,  
>  _ _slow as smoke from a factory  
>  _ _in Pittsburgh, …  
>  _ _… slow as steam off the bath  
>  _ _or a lover with only the blues to sing._
> 
> **Cole’s Guitar**

Bilbo comes home to the Shire and the first time he sees its rolling green hills and growing fields out of the airplane window, he cries. Home. He was _home_. He made it. The air stewardess, a matronly woman he’s known since he was a teen, slides him an extra cookie before the plane begins its descent.

Frodo and a large array of cousins meet him at the airport with a huge WELCOME HOME sign and Bilbo’s crying again.

First thing he does when he gets home to the 40-acres his dad had named Bag End, is kiss the hood of his old red Ford. The truck wasn’t worth a penny if it was a worth a dime, but Bilbo refuses to get rid of it.

There’s a party that night and Bilbo enjoys seeing so many of his friends and family, they gather around him – welcoming him home and asking for his future plans (“None just yet”) and war stories (“Oh, I don’t think so”).

It takes two weeks before Bilbo is ready to pull his hair out from boredom.

He’s already trudged along his property lines, repairing fences and clearing up downed trees, along with trash where some teens had obviously been enjoying his absence. Maybe he’d get a dog or three. His old red hound, Smaug, did nothing more than sleep – either on Bilbo’s porch or in the now-empty barn.

Before he had left for the Navy, Bilbo’s family had made their money raising some of the top herd cutters in Eriador. But, with his parents gone, Bilbo hadn’t the heart to continue the program so he sold off all but three of his horses, a pair of seniors named Yavanna and Aulë, upon whose backs Bilbo had ridden before he could walk. Aulë passed during Bilbo’s first tour; Yavanna during his second.

The third horse is a petite yet strong mare named Myrtle, and it’s just her and ol’ Smaug who live on the property Bag End, tended to by Frodo while Bilbo was off fighting his war. Bilbo throws a saddle over Myrtle and, as he tightens the cinch, asks her if she’d like a friend. As expected, she has no reply for him but to whack him with a swish of her tail.

“As you like, then,” Bilbo mutters, pulling himself into the saddle and, with a whistle for Smaug, sets out for another look at a section of fence.

This, here, Bilbo decides, looking out over Myrtle’s head at the rolling meadow, the pasture that had once fed a herd of twenty horses and the odd milk cow, dotted here and there with trees, of Bag End, this is where he can find his peace.

It lasts all of three days.

(The Shire is too quiet, his bed is too soft. And Bilbo finds himself on more than one midnight walk and it takes him longer than it should to admit to himself that he’s patrolling.)

It takes another week for him to decide what he wants to do and, before he changes his mind, he pulls out his phone and googles: _how to build a hospital in your backyard_.

There’s already a hospital in the Shire, and it’s a very nice one. But it’s closer to Bree than it is to Bilbo’s rural town of Hobbiton and Bilbo’s seen more than his fair share of farmers, ranchers, and ‘smiths letting an injury get too far along.

So, he takes the barn—

(“Don’t worry, Miss Myrtle,” Bilbo tells her as he turns her out to the paddock. “You’ll have your _own_ barn.”

Myrtle swings her head to look at him and Bilbo swears she’s glaring.

“Really?” Bilbo says, ignoring the fact that he’s arguing with his horse as he gestures behind her. “Look! There’s a perfectly good barn—,” some might call it a tool shed, Bilbo says that if there’re no tools in the tool shed and the floor’s covered in straw and hay, then it’s a goddamn barn, “—right there. It’s warm and dry. Perfectly acceptable.”

Myrtle snorts and turns pointedly away from him.)

—and turns it into a clinic with the first floor being a rather large waiting room and two exam rooms and an office for Bilbo, and the second floor becomes a ward with three beds and a small surgery.

The paint is barely dried when his old war buddy, Gaffer himself, shows up at the door, panic on his face and his wife, Bell, in labor at his side.

“Your timing is as impeccable as always,” Bilbo mutters, before he ushers everyone in.

Bilbo hires on his cousin Primula to help with paperwork and work the reception and the phone lines; Frodo, Bilbo hires as a part-time nurse once the boy takes an interest in the field of medicine (but, without any formal schooling, Bilbo never lets him work on his own). Merry and Pippin, more distant relations, he hires to keep everything clean – more because the work will keep them out of trouble than anything else.

Bilbo accepts payments in the forms of apples and watermelons and pipe weed and, after saving the Thain himself from losing a toe, a day of the year set aside in his honor.

(“You always did say your birthday should be a county holiday,” Primula says.

Bilbo settles back into his armchair, grinning, “And now all is right with the world.”)

If something more serious comes in, Bilbo does what he can before he loads the patient in the back of his truck and puts Pippin behind the wheel – the boy may be daft and far too inquisitive for his own good, but there wasn’t a soul in this county or the next who could out-drive him – much to the chagrin of the local law.

The first time they have to do that, Bilbo and his patient spend most of it bouncing all over the place. So Bilbo decides to retire the old Ford and get something newer.

“Chevy,” Prim says, pulling up pictures on her phone.

“Got to stay with Ford,” Frodo says, glancing at his mother with concern, as if the very thought of deviating from a Ford was turning his stomach.

“You’re right,” Bilbo says, standing. “Toyota.”

Prim and Frodo whip their heads around and glare.

In the end, Bilbo goes down to the nearest lot and picks the closest white truck before he takes it down the lane to the Goodwort sisters and asks them to paint a red hospital cross on the side doors and the hood.

“You just mean red plus signs, right?” Egel asks, popping her gum.

“Yes,” Bilbo blinks. “Red plus signs.”

“Got it,” Agel says, spitting into a can. Agel’s plan to give up chew obviously not going quite as well as her sister’s – Bilbo offers her some nicotine replacement products, but she waves him off.

Before Bilbo realizes, the floating heads on the television are talking about the anniversary of the end of the war with Mordor coming up in just a few weeks.

Bilbo stops in the middle of his conversation with Primula at the desk to fully turn to the television.

It’d been—? This time last year, he’d been laughing as Thorin tried his damndest to guess what it was Bilbo did for a living. The thought was almost enough to knock Bilbo off his feet.

“Cousin?” Primula’s voice is distant, almost quiet and it brings Bilbo out of his reverie – he blinks and there’s a commercial playing now about toilet paper. Bilbo shakes himself.

“Yes, Prim?” he asks her, turning to face his cousin. She’s got a look of concern on her face.

“I was just wondering where you went to,” she says, “just now. Do you want to talk about it?”

Stone floors and shitting in what was little more than a bucket while dead men rotted in cells across the aisle were not, in fact, things Bilbo wanted to talk about. He’s told her and Frodo little things, about Thorin and Bard and some of the others he served with – things like singing Disney songs to stay awake on watch or to chase away nightmares (but not about the song Bard led on that last day), or even playing I Spy (though he leaves out the part that the only thing to spy were rocks and a horizon that was perpetually on fire) to simply while away the hours.

“It’s fine,” Bilbo says. He gestures to the tv. “I just didn’t realize it’s already been a year.”

“Yeah,” she says, smiling. “You’ve been keeping yourself pretty busy.”

Bilbo echoes her smile and then he takes the files for an upcoming appointment and settles himself at his desk. He flips open the first file and flinches when the shape of the words blur and distort themselves until they look like a rotting wound.

Bilbo forces his eyes closed and takes a deep breath.

When he opens his eyes, the words on the page look normal – detailing current vaccinations for little Marigold Gamgee, the child Bilbo had delivered before he could even technically declare his clinic open, along with the vaccines she’s about due for. Vaccines. Vaccines only. No rotting wounds here.

All the same, Bilbo opens the window to his office, lets in the Shire’s soft breeze to chase away the stink of the dead.

That first anniversary comes and then it goes, Bilbo chasing it with a bottle of whiskey on his front porch swing, Smaug sleeping at his feet, looking up at the full moon and wondering, if somewhat morosely, where Thorin had disappeared to.

The second anniversary passes, too, and before he can blink, the third is nearly upon him.

IV.

> _I’ve had too much bad sleep. Not enough coffee.  
>  _ _And the hours pass the way helicopters  
>  _ _hover above …  
>  _ _or the way Fiorillo reads letters from his wife  
>  _ _with a red lens flashlight, down in the troop hold._
> 
> _There’s a feeling I can’t quite shake.  
>  _ _…  
>  _ _I read my own red pages  
>  _ _as death whispers from the rotors._
> 
> **Tigris River Blues**

Bilbo glares out his peephole.

“Absolutely not,” he yells at the man on his porch.

Smaug, the worthless dog, continued his sleep – head on one paw as the other dangled off the stoop, his hind legs stretched out behind him.

“Bilbo Baggins,” Gandalf hollers, “don’t be rude to such an old friend.”

Bilbo opens his door just a hair, peeks out with only one eye. “What have you come all the way out to Hobbiton for?” he demands.

Gandalf smirks and, from seemingly nowhere, procures a small postcard, “There’s a little gathering, a shindig, if you will, to which I would like to invite you.”

The _shindig_ is a remembrance ceremony to be hosted in Erebor, of all places.

“I thought Erebor was a country of recluses,” Bilbo says.

“I take it you’re not all that caught up on current happenings of the world?” Gandalf asks and there’s a twinkle of mischief in his eyes that puts Bilbo on guard.

Bilbo hands over the invitation, “The war’s over,” he says, “I have my own business to attend to. And memorials are for the dead.” When Gandalf doesn’t take the invitation, Bilbo drops it onto the table beside his armchair. He then gives Gandalf a searching look. “Why? Is there something I should know?”

“I promise, dear friend,” he says, “I am not always out to bring you into trouble.”

That’s exactly what he said when he suggested that instead of _paying_ for medical school, Bilbo could join Eriador’s Navy and they’d give him the education for free.

Well, free- _ish_.

“No, of course not,” Bilbo says slowly. But he eases up anyway, because, in reality, no part of him actually dislikes Gandalf.

It’s been a long time since last they’d seen each other – the bigger, older man had made it a point to visit Bilbo a couple days after Bilbo had returned to Hobbiton. Gandalf had fought in his own wars and he knew that it wasn’t talk Bilbo had needed, but instead quiet company and they had spent many hours on Bilbo’s front porch, smoking and watching Smaug sleep and listening to Myrtle answer a distant horse’s neighing.

“If it eases your decision any,” Gandalf says, taking out his pipe and rising to head towards the porch, Bilbo smiles and follows him, grabbing his own pipe from the shelving next to the front door, grinning when he hears Gandalf’s next words, “there’ll be free food and an open bar.”

Bilbo smiles up at his old friend. “Really, Gandalf, that’s all you had to say.”

Gandalf snorts. “You country folk. I pray you never change.”

Bilbo settles himself with an exaggerated groan onto his porch swing. “As if we are able,” he says after lighting his tobacco.

Gandalf is just getting into his car, a funny looking little car that should’ve been far too small for him to even fold himself into, when Bilbo asks, “Why me? Why have I been invited?”

“My dear Bilbo,” Gandalf says, one foot in his car, the other still on the ground as he leaned over the door, “you realize you’re a war hero?”

“I’m a simple country doctor,” Bilbo says, lifting his hands up and stepping back.

“I’ve seen your numbers,” Gandalf says, suddenly very serious, and Bilbo wonders at what kind of clearance Gandalf might have to be able to see Bilbo’s file, “you saved a great many lives.”

Bilbo doesn’t say it, but he’s more familiar with another number. He _knows_ he _shouldn’t_ count the number of those he didn’t save – he’s been practicing medicine far, _far_ too long to have the hubris to think he could save everyone – but it’s still a number he thinks about and holds close. Not necessarily out of regret, but to remember that there’s always more to learn, that things are not always so simple and sometimes people die, no matter how good you think you are.

Bilbo finally just settles on looking at Gandalf and saying, “I did what I could.”

And, for now, Gandalf leaves it at that as he folds himself into his little car, honking once, twice, as he heads down the drive.

On the porch, Smaug finally snorts awake.

Bilbo spends the rest of night glaring at the invitation. Memorials _were_ for the dead. Bilbo believed, if with no small amount of pessimism, that the living needed to keep _living_ for if they paused too often to think of the dead, they would find themselves just as stuck. They would find themselves just as the dead.

By the time he wakes up in the morning, he makes a decision – and it’s not the one he thought it’d be.

“Primula,” Bilbo greets his cousin as she walks into the clinic. He holds up the invitation. “I’ll soon be heading out of town for a few days.”

V.

> _We share a long night  
>  _ _of breathing. And when the dead  
>  _ _speak to us, we must ask them  
>  _ _to wait, to be patient,  
>  _ _for the night is still ours_
> 
> **Where the Telemetries End**

Bilbo lands at Erebor International Airport and he’s more than pleased that Gandalf is there to pick him up.

“I’m only here for the food,” he says, before Gandalf can say anything and before that goddamn twinkle in Gandalf’s eye can get any brighter.

Gandalf takes Bilbo’s garment bag, it’s obviously military issue – dark blue and worn with age and travel – and Gandalf handles it with care even as he leans in to whisper, “I have it on good authority that Erebor’s royal family will be making an appearance tomorrow night.”

“Is that right?” Bilbo asks, raising an eyebrow.

There were no confirmed pictures of Erebor’s royalty, aside from that of the ruling king, Thror. It’d long been the policy of the kingdom that only the King Under the Mountain – a funny title, Bilbo thought, until Google told him that the royal estates had been _literally_ built into a mountain – would have their photographs distributed. Rumor was that the entirety of the royal family was known by sight by their own citizens, but their countenances were as jealously guarded as their language, Khudzul.

And, okay, maybe Bilbo has other reasons for coming here.

Bilbo knew that Thorin spoke Khudzul, thus it only made sense that Thorin would be from this region. So, if he was lucky, Bilbo could get this thing over with and then maybe head into the city and, he didn’t know, maybe start knocking on houses until his Thorin answered the door. He doesn’t let himself think about the time that’s passed and that maybe Thorin’s moved on – no matter how tightly he’d gripped Bilbo’s arm.

Bilbo is just clambering into a taxi with Gandalf when a thought hits him – if a simple medic from as far as _the Shire_ got invited to this shindig, then surely a local would have as well, right? Maybe Thorin would be there, too.

Bilbo, to his own disgust, sighs sappily at the prospect.

Bilbo puts on his uniform, smooths it down, straightens the medals and ribbons weighing heavy on his chest. He looks in the mirror and then wishes he hadn’t.

After half an hour of mingling, Bilbo doesn’t see Thorin, but he does stumble across Bard – they share a hug and quickly catch up.

“I didn’t see you last year’s event,” Bard says, his eyebrows raised in question.

“I wasn’t invited to last year’s event,” Bilbo says, a touch harsher than he means – he hadn’t even known there’d been an event last year, why should he be upset he hadn’t been invited to it?

“Well,” Bard says, looking away and, rather suspiciously, towards the entrance that was reserved for the royals for when it was time, “you’re in for quite a treat, doc.”

Bilbo narrows his eyes.

Bilbo continues his mingling and finds a few more familiar faces who greet him with tight, almost bone-crushing hugs, before he’s being introduced to whoever’s around as The One Doctor to Rule Them All and, really, Bilbo can only roll eyes.

Just like the creativity of his fellow Jailhouse residents, those in the military can also claim a certain flair for the dramatic.

He’s just getting himself another glass of wine from the bar, Bard himself at his side, when the trumpets sound. Gandalf appears next to him, as well, wearing something of a self-satisfied smirk.

Conversations slow and quiet, and all eyes turn towards the doorway.

Fili and Kili, the youngest princes of Erebor are the first to make their entrance; they’re followed by their uncle, Frerin, and then their mother, Dis and her husband. They reach the end of the carpet and stand off to the side and, if Bilbo’s memory serves, there’s one more prince and then the king.

Bilbo looks away from the entrance to glance down at his drink before he takes a sip – just to promptly spit everything out when the speaker announces, “His Royal Majesty, Thorin Durin, the Oakenshield of Erebor,” and Thorin, the soldier from the Jailhouse cell next to his, walks into the room.

And Bilbo’s spit-take must have attracted attention because Thorin is looking _right at him_.

The fucker then _winks_ – saucy and exaggerated and not wholly unlike what Bilbo had thrown his way as Bilbo was dragged away by Jailhouse guards – and Bilbo’s face _burns_.

Bilbo doesn’t have much longer to think about it because after Thorin, comes Thror, not that Bilbo ever looks at the king.

After everything settles, Bilbo is very quickly escorted by a grumbling Bard towards the royal family.

“You have no idea how awful the _sighing_ was, doc,” he says.

“You _knew?_ ” Bilbo whispers.

“No,” Bard denies, shaking his head vehemently. “We knew each other in passing, but I had _no_ idea he was royalty until after the war.”

“Typical,” Bilbo says just as Thorin spots them and, completely abandoning a group of people who looked Very Important, starts forward, his arms opening and wrapping around Bilbo, pulling him tight against him.

And it’s funny, all their time imprisoned together, and Bilbo never quite realized how _tall_ Thorin is. He knew, if in a sort of abstract way, that there was a lot of real estate there. But they had never stood up together, if either of them had even been _sitting up_ at all.

“Y’know,” Thorin says, his tone conversational and not at all like he’s still clinging just as tightly to Bilbo as Bilbo is to him, with a roomful of eyes on them both, “I never did catch your last name.”

Bilbo pulls back and with a playful smile and maybe eyes that are a little too watery for this occasion; must be the dust. Yes. Old places like this could be dusty.

“HMC Bilbo Baggins of Eriador’s Navy, your majesty,” Bilbo says, giving a theatrical bow, “at your service.”

Thorin echoes the bow, says, “General Thorin Durin, Army of Erebor; at your service, HMC Baggins.”

Then they straighten and they stand there, grinning and laughing at each other – as if they’d just heard the best joke in the world.

The rest of the night passes in a whirl of introductions to royalty and nobility, and it’s not long before the story spreads of how the prince and doctor know each other. Suddenly Bilbo finds himself fielding more and more questions until Thorin whisks him from the room, and out into a garden – where they exchange stories long into the night, and more than a few kisses.

Bilbo’s just about to fall asleep, leaning back into Thorin’s chest, when Thorin nudges him awake – just in time to see the first colors of the sunrise.

It’s the first of many.

VI.

> _If you hear gunfire on a Thursday afternoon,  
>  _ _it could be a wedding, or it could be for you._
> 
> **What Every Soldier Should Know**

Three years later, Bilbo and Thorin grab Fili and Kili and they run to the Shire. Frodo and Primula meet them at the airport with Bilbo’s old Ford, and everyone hops into the back of the truck and drive to the nearest chapel.

Bilbo says, “I do.”

Then Thorin says, “I do.”

And Gandalf says, “Then go forth, and may you enjoy the rest of your days.”

END.


End file.
